A board member for the National Rifle Association (NRA), speaking on the record, publicly recommended that US citizens who disagree with the policies of his lobbying organization be shot and killed.
NRA board member Ted Nugent, speaking on the right-wing Alex Jones Show webcast distributed to over 830 US radio stations urged followers to "keep your gun handy, and every time you see one, you shoot one," in reference to the growing number of Americans who disagree with the lobbying group's policy of freewheeling weapons ownership in the country.
"Don't ask why," the former musician encouraged his listeners, "Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam artists have always been around and that right now they're liberal, they're Democrat, they're RINOs [for Republicans in Name Only — referring to those party members who do not follow the conservative NRA agenda], they're Hollywood, they're fake news, they're media, they're academia, and they're half of our government, at least," cited by Newsweek.
A long-standing debate regarding US citizens' unregulated ownership of military-grade assault weapons burst into new relevance in 2018 following a deadly February 14 school shooting in Florida in which 17 were killed and many more injured.
A March For Our Lives rally in Washington DC on March 24 alongside hundreds of concurrent demonstrations in the nation and around the world urging lawmakers to quickly implement simple and effective gun regulation drew at least 800,000, making it one of the most heavily-attended public events in US history.
Talking during an April 6 webcast at conspiracy-theory website Infowars.com, owned by Genesis Communications Network, Nugent insisted that those who disagree with the NRA platform of unregulated gun ownership in the US were "rabid coyotes," and that "you don't wait till you see one to go get your gun," to shoot and kill them, cited by Mother Jones.
The US sees over 73,000 injured and over 33,000 people killed by guns annually — a figure far-surpassing that of any other nation, according to multiple sources.
